Substantiality Is Only Skin Deep
by Miss Edelstein
Summary: Ghosts are around us all the time, but they are only substantial by day. At night, they fade back to their shadowy forms. So what happens, by a stroke of luck, when substantial ghosts meet their human soul mates? Death. And two people, Dalisay Matapang and Mathias Køhler, know death very well. But maybe it's a chance for redemption. Ghost!AU. SwitzPhili, DenNor, UKUS/USUK, etc.


**My OC is Dalisay Matapang (the Philippines), and her name is pronounced "dah-LEE-sigh mah-tuh-pong."**

**Because this whole chapter happened in the past, it's in italics, so the words in normal font are the ones that would be italicized if the chapter were in normal font, and the dialogue that's in normal font now is spoken in the language of the country the person is in (in this chapter: the Philippines, and Denmark)! And by the way, major OOC warnings for Denmark, because I've only written him once before in a drabble, so please don't flame! And I'm not an expert on the foreign languages used, so if something's wrong, please tell me!**

**And I didn't proofread this because I have to get some sleep, so ignore any mistakes, please!**

**Pairings: Switzerland/Philippines, UK/US, Denmark/Norway, Prussia/Austria (at first, Prussia and Hungary will fight over Austria), Lithuania/Belarus, France/Canada, Germany/N. Italy, Spain/S. Italy, Sweden/Finland, and probably more that I'm too lazy to write down now.**

**Warning: It's my headcanon that Denmark is slightly crazy, but able to function well enough to get through life.**

* * *

_"_Itay_, _is this what you want? Are you sure?_" Dalisay knelt at her father's bedside, the sunlight washing away the sweat on their skin and bathing them in a youthful light._

_Itay coughed and looked at her, pain radiating from his gaze. "_Oo_. _I don't want to live through this pain anymore. But Dali-_"_

_"_I'll do it, Itay, no matter what the cost_." She looked at her father with fiercely determined brown eyes. "_Just tell me when_."_

_"_Not just yet, iha. I need to talk to you about what happens after this_."_

_"_I know what happens after this! I bury you in the backyard, carry on with the farm and marry a rich man in two years. Simple._" Dalisay looked at her father, frustrated. While she knew she sounded like she wanted him dead, she just didn't want him to keep suffering. And that was why they were where they were now. She wanted to end his pain. For his sake. But after he was gone, she had no choice but to live a life she didn't want to live. But how else would she survive? She was sixteen years old. True, had she graduated college, she would've been fine, but she never went to college. There wasn't enough money from their farm, and both she and her father worked from dawn till the evening to make ends meet._

_It had been a good life. She would hang around the local boys, work with her father, drink with the boys or her father, and go to sleep. School had never been a big deal. Though she struggled with math and science, she was practically a genius when it came to history and language. She could already speak five different languages, and half of the Filipino dialects, besides Tagalog. She planned to learn many more someday. Even if it meant just studying out of a book instead of traveling and learning. The school she went to wasn't much of one, but it was enough to qualify her for college._

_"_No. That's not what happens_," said Itay, struggling to sit up. Dalisay cocked her head to the side, confused. "_You will go to America_."_

_"_America_?" she whispered, her eyes wide with wonder. She had always dreamed of going to America, the land of the free, the home of the brave. It seemed too good to be true. In all her sixteen years, America had always seemed like the one place she would never be able to get to. How would she even fit in there, with all those blue-eyed, beautiful blondes, with their fancy technology and their unlimited knowledge of the world around them? Where would she fit in the puzzle piece of opportunities in America? But she was quickly snapped back to reality after Itay coughed again._

_"_Oo_,_ America_," Itay said, smiling weakly at her, his face crinkling, and his graying black moustache curving up with his dry lips. She could smell the alcohol on his tongue, the rum on his breath- the scent of home. "_That's where you'll be going. I've saved up enough for you to get there_."_

_Dalisay knew that that was most of their money- just getting to America. The unspoken words flew between them: You're on your own once you get there._

_But it didn't matter. Because she was going to America, and she wasn't going to be stuck working on a farm until she met someone that she would pretend to love, just for the money. She knew she'd never love. It wasn't in her nature to love- at least, romantically. She loved her brothers- her boys, and her father, but she was much too… masculine, to be loved romantically. She didn't think of herself as a boy, though she considered herself to be one of the brothers. But everyone in her small village knew that she was the toughest of them all, the fiercest and the strongest-willed. Boys admired her, not for her beauty, but because she could fight them, laugh with them, and talk with them just as they would another boy. She was not a normal girl. Boys strived to be like her, girls looked at her in disdain because of how much of a boy she was, and adults looked at her as, perhaps, the next mayor, ignoring the fact that she had never been to college. Then again, most of the people in her village hadn't been either, so it didn't matter. Even her _itay_ called her "my little Lapu-Lapu," after the warrior. Little because she was only five foot four._

_"_But what about the farm?_" Dalisay asked, her thoughts roaming back to the Philippines from the golden fields and the busy cities of America._

_"_Maybe someday, you can come back and take care of it again. But for now, it can stay. You're more important._"_

_"_How am I even going to stay there? I'd need permission for permanent residence. A green card._" She gave her father a pointed look, sharper than what someone should give to a dying man._

_"_You know who helped me_," said Itay, returning her gaze evenly._

_She gasped, her hand inching towards the golden cross on her chest. "Carriedo?"_

_"_Who else?_" Itay smiled at her weakly before he was wracked with more coughs._

_She sighed, memories of the handsome, kind Spaniard with the brilliant green eyes coming to the surface. She hadn't seen him in nearly two years. At first, Dalisay hated him, but as he kept visiting every year, she grew to like him. She never thought of the day that she would admit to missing him. But she assumed that he grew tired of visiting the Philippines after five years of trips. Nobody knew what happened to him. For the first time, Dalisay wondered if Antonio Fernandez Carriedo was dead._

_"_And what about money? I'll need some money,_" said Dalisay, and then she smirked. "_I guess I'll have to thank Carriedo for that too, huh? You know, if I ever see him again_." Her voice had drifted into a wistful whisper by the time she spoke the last word, and Itay looked at her in shock._

_"_Did you… love Antoni-_"_

_"Hell no!" Dalisay pretended to throw up, much to Itay's amusement. "_That's sick. And he's like, what, ten years older? Not that that's bad, but he's… him._"_

_Itay laughed, and for one beautiful moment, Dalisay believed that everything was back to normal. That she wasn't about to do something that would change her life forever. But when Itay's laughs turned to moans of pain, she knew it was time._

_"_Everything is here,_" Itay gasped out, his fingers trembling as he handed her a thick envelope that had been lying on top of his bedside table. "_Everything you'll need to get to America._"_

_"_I love you, Itay_," Dalisay said, her glasses slipping down her nose as she bent her head down to look at her feet. She couldn't even look at him. Her voice suddenly sounded hoarse and grief-stricken and fuck, this was going to be much harder than she thought._

_"_You will do something great someday, Dalisay. I know it._" Her father looked at her one last time and for the first time in her life, she felt what it was like to be weak. It wasn't a good feeling. She wanted to turn time around, go back to feeling invincible with the boys from their small village, and prevent the awful sickness her father got that took her life away. Opportunities be damned. History and language be damned, too. Was she strong enough to make it there? It was survival for the fittest, and while she was fit for a fight, was she fit to handle all the emotions that came out of killing someone for love? For leaving the only country she's ever known and going to some big-shot country across the most peaceful, mournful ocean of all? Could she handle it? She was just Dalisay Matapang, not a famous name, not a killer's name, just a name. The name of someone whose life would never be the same. She needed the kind of strength she didn't have. Her father needed that strength to live. She needed to know that what she was about to do wasn't wrong._

_But _syanuro_ is stronger._

* * *

_"_You're a worthless piece of shit, you hear that, Køhler? You and your father are the filth of the Earth, and your mother is lucky I even married her with such a disgrace as her eldest son! You belong in a mental hospital, or in hell! You're worthless, insane, stupid, and- LISTEN TO ME, BOY!_"_

_Black. Always black. Always wearing black. Seeing in black, hearing in black, black bruises and black eyes and black skies and black souls._

Sort_._

_Because this is his life. All in black and white. And Mathias hated poems, hates poems, will hate poems, because they make people happy, and he's never happy. What is happiness? How can someone possibly be happy when there's so much to lose? So much pain and suffering. Everyone was worthless in this land of monsters._

_"_Can't you do anything right for once in your goddamned life? You've nearly put me in prison, you son of a bitch! I bet it was you who did it! You killed Berwald and tried to frame me! Am I right? Ha! Of course I'm right! You're trying to get rid of me, but newsflash, Køhler! You need me! You wouldn't be alive without me! Nobody in their right minds would ever take you in! But why did I do it? Because your father has left you behind the biggest fortune in all of Denmark! Scandinavia, even! And your mother is the easiest bitch in all of Eur-_"_

_"_SHUT UP!_"_

_It finally came out. In all of his seventeen years, this was his one moment of courage. And pride and youth and _happiness_ and invincibility rushed through his blackened arteries and veins and his heart was a pump of hope and-_

_"_What_ did you just fucking _say_ to _me_?"_

_And black eyes were on Mathias's broken self again, and he felt all the good things fade into the walls of his blood vessels, clotting the hope he had finally experienced and was that a heart attack? Was that why he was shaking and laughing?_

_"_I said to shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up-_"_

_Punch._

_Mathias lifted his hand and gingerly touched his eye, wincing in pain. Not that black eyes were foreign to him in any way. But they reminded him of his mother, with her smoky black eye shadow making her green eyes pop out like emeralds in a bouquet of coal. She had been a dancer. A beautiful ballerina from the Royal Danish Ballet. Even in grief, she had been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but perhaps with the exception of his late sister, Miksa, a spitfire who would tease him in Inuktitut and Danish as if she were older than him._

_They were home. Mother, Miksa, and his little brother. But home was gone now. It's been gone. Now he had no home. All that had been left was him, Berwald, and-_

_But Berwald was gone. And of course, he was getting the blame for the Swede's death. But it was _him_ who killed him, perhaps by accident, but it was still his fault. And Berwald was dead and he didn't deserve to die and Mathias was drowning in black because Berwald was the one person who he didn't get along with (most of the time), but he knew what Mathias had to deal with, even if he had never been on the receiving side of the blow himself._

_Nobody was going to save Mathias. He had to save himself before he sank too deep._

_"_Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up!_" He knew he sounded crazy, and it was just proving this monster to be right about him, but he didn't care. All he knew was that he had to get away, or he was going to lose the very small sliver of sanity he had left in his bruised brain._

_And he was running. He couldn't even remember when his legs got the strength to stand his body upright, but they did, and he flew past Miksa's old room and slid down the banister to get downstairs. _He_ was following, his feet crushing the old, polished wood like bulls in a ballroom, so Mathias pushed himself to run faster, run faster than ever before. He felt like he was about to fall forward with every flying step he took, but thankfully, hopefully, gravity would help him out this time and keep his bruised face off the ground._

_"_You're a coward, Køhler! Just like your father had been! What are you doing now, Køhler? Running away from the big bad wolf? Well, guess what! I have no problem with that! It just means that you're the pathetic Little Red Riding Hood! And guess how your clothes will become red!_"_

_It took everything Mathias had not to turn around and rip his head from his body and burn it over a fire, but he had to control himself. He had to get away. This wasn't new- the running, the suffering, the taunting, the beating. But it has gotten worse since Berwald died. And Mathias knew that this was his last straw._

_He could try to run to Copenhagen and get himself lost in the streets. He could even try to get to Sweden. Or Norway. He grinned at the thought of Norway. He never knew why, but he's always had some weird fascination with that country._

_Copenhagen was only a ten-minute walk away. Perhaps a five-minute run. It was tempting to hide there for the rest of his life, never having to see _him_ again and get on with his non-existent life and try to make one. So tempting._

_But in that moment, as he looked down at his white dress shirt and his long black coat, he decided he wanted to add red._

_Red with _his_ blood._

_It's been a long time coming, really. They always said revenge was sweet, and who was Mathias to disagree with them? After all, he couldn't exactly disagree with himself. They pushed him and tortured him with words, sometimes sweet with a sprinkle of death, or sometimes harsh, harsher than _he_ could ever dream to be. It was painful and he was addicted to the voices in his head telling him he can do better, he's an awful person, because they make him stronger. No pain, no gain. No internal pain, no external gain._

_He ran to the shed behind their large, looming, reach-for-the-black-clouds mansion, and he knew from the footsteps that he was being followed. Perfect._

_"_What are you gonna find in the shed, Køhler? Courage? Sanity?! Not likely. Stop right there and fight me like a real man!_"_

_Mathias gritted his teeth and rammed into the shed door at full speed, not even flinching as his shoulder broke through the old wood, splinters probably imbedded in his clothes near his skin. The lock had done no good. He knew it. And Mathias smirked, uncontrollable laughter bubbling to the surface as he gripped the one useful thing that his father had left for him. His father said that it came from the time of the Vikings, and had been passed down through the centuries. Mathias felt in touch with his Viking ancestors, and knew that he had found home again. He was meant to hold it in his hand. This battle axe was his. It was fate. Destiny. And although he didn't believe in Him, he was sure God meant for him to use it._

_"_Gonna hide in there? What a petty place to die. But then again, the sooner the better. I really should've done this sooner, don't you know that, Køhler? But I had too much fun in this game, and now I've lost Berwald because of you. It's better that I end you while I can before everyone finds out just how worthless you really are! And when you're gone, no one's left to stand in the way of your father's fortune. Everyone will say, 'Oh, that poor man, having to deal with that disturbed boy. Mathias Køhler, that's his name, right? He even killed that poor man's son. I hope that man finds peace with the fortune- he truly deserves it.' And I do! And you will suffer the way I have since I married your bitch of a mother!_"_

_Mathias let out an irate roar as he jumped from the sanctuary of the shadows and swung the axe towards _him_. _He_ laughed and sidestepped out of the way._

_"_So this will be the end of the game, huh? I was just going to kill you quickly, but now that you're being a bad boy, I'll just have to make you suffer!_"_

_"_You're the one who will suffer! How dare you insult my mother?! My father! And you! _You_ killed Berwald, I didn't kill Berwald, you killed him you killed him you killed him because he defied you once! You killed him killed him killed him and he didn't deserve to die!_" Mathias knew he sounded so insane with the slurring and repeating of words, but he was drunk on anger and a sip of beer from this morning. Everything was flowing from him in waves- anger was the fire and the embers were everything else falling like rain from the dark sky, the black sky, the black, black sky._

_"I didn't-" _He_ started when Mathias slammed into him._

_"You killed him you killed him you killed Berwald and my father and my mother and my sister and my brother! YOU-" Mathias held the axe with one hand and punched _him_ with the other, "KILLED-" He slammed _his_ head into the wall so hard that the dent made almost went through to the other side, "ALL OF THEM!"_

_And Mathias stepped back, gripped his battle axe with all the strength he had, and swung straight through _his_ neck._

_"Now _you're_ the one who's dead, Oxenstierna!"_

* * *

**So, yeah. Violence and language. That's a late warning. Like I said, sorry if Denmark's OOC! He'll be more normal in the next chapters, though, because it's in the present. Hope you enjoyed!**


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